Re: foundation plantings

Re   > It was 
> fun working on the design of the house as it could only be 30' wide and I 
> think 64' long. I had to make interesting roof lines and diagonal walls 

Chris, you designed the house yourself? How exciting! Before we bought
our house we toyed with building a steel frame house. With those you can
postion things anywhere as the walls aren't load-bearing.


I read someplace that the rule of thumb is not to place a tree closer
than 8 feet to the house. Thank goodness I didn't with my Cornus and
Prunus, but I did place what I thought was a Prunus cistena shrub very
close to the house and it turned out to be a small tree variety. I hack
away at it every year rather than move it because I like where it is.


My lot is 60 ft wide and the front yard between sidewalk and house is
only about 25-30 ft. My husband plunked a little Blue Spruce in the
front yard. When he finally moved out I sent the spruce to the backyard.
I knew as time went by it would be so out of scale with the front of the
lot. However, I planted it too close to the fence so the bottom 4 feet
of growth is not balanced front and back. In trying to correct his
mistake, I made another. But I'd prefer that particular mistake be in
the back.

--
Kitty 
neIN, Zone5

-------------- Original message -------------- 

> When my husband built our house 20 years ago, we deliberately worked around 
> any trees we could. The only mature tree we had to remove was a 
> chokecherry. I have a red cedar just feet from the front door that I limbed 
> up. I love the bark and it feels like the house with its cedar shakes is 
> wedded with the natural environment. Our house is on the water, but we are 
> somewhat obscured by more cedars which interfere with our water view. We 
> like it that way! Hard to take a picture of the house though! 
> 
> I made foundation planting mistakes as well. The English holly, which was 
> only a few feet tall when I planted it, sits 5' from the foundation. A wee 
> bit too close you say? It looked comical around here when I first planted. 
> All these little shrubs and this tall house! If you looked at my Ilex 
> pictures, you saw that the plantings go past the roofline. Luckily they 
> block the windows of my son's bedroom enough that he doesn't need a curtain. 
> There are no curtains in my house. Even though on one side we have a 
> neighbor just 20' away, we situated the windows to give us privacy. It was 
> fun working on the design of the house as it could only be 30' wide and I 
> think 64' long. I had to make interesting roof lines and diagonal walls 
> inside to break up the railroad car look. Those were fun times. 
> 
> Chris 
> Long Island, NY 
> Zone 7a (Average min temp 50 - 00) 
> 
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